


Miles to Go Before I Sleep

by grumkin_snark



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-22
Updated: 2017-11-22
Packaged: 2019-02-02 14:08:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12728052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grumkin_snark/pseuds/grumkin_snark
Summary: They may slaughter her son, they may kill her brother, they may chase her from her home, but they will not take her life. She will endure—with fire and blood, she will endure.





	Miles to Go Before I Sleep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SydneyLouWho](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SydneyLouWho/gifts).



This birth isn’t like the others, she can feel it. She feels… _off_. Rhaegar had been the hardest of her babes, she had been scarce more than a child herself, but even that hadn’t felt like this. For hours and hours that feel like days she labors, falling asleep out of exhaustion only to wake up minutes later with another wave of agony.

_This will be my last_ , she thinks. _I will not survive this._

The maester certainly doesn’t think she will, she can see it on his face the longer the labor draws on. Her only comfort is Ser Willem, whom she knows will be loyal to the last, will protect her children like they’re his own. At least she would finally get to rest. After nearly forty long, hard years, she could be at peace. Peace is all she wants, all she’s ever wanted.

The babe comes with a screeching wail, a healthy wail, and Rhaella smiles when the maester tells her it’s a girl—a victory. She tells him her name is Daenerys, a woman she’d idolized in her girlhood, a woman who had gone from a bastard half-brother lusting after her to a loving husband who built her a palace and a brood of children far away in Dorne where women are treated with kindness, not cruelty.

Two days she spends in a haze of dull aches and confusion, and she knows it must not be long now. She is prepared. At least, until her son comes to her bedside, his lilac eyes wide and fearful. “Mama?” he whispers. “The maesters said I couldn’t see you so I snuck in. Are you going to die, Mama?”

She summons the strength to place her hand on his soft cheek; a tear falls, hot and wet over her fingers. “The gods may take me soon,” she tells him. “But I will never be gone from your heart.”

“I need you,” Viserys weeps. “I _need_ you. Auntie Elia and Rhaenys and the baby are all gone and I don’t _want_ to live with Ser Willem, I want _you_ , Mama. Don’t leave me.”

Her body wants her to let go, she knows that. She’s so _tired_ , more tired than she’s ever been, and it would be so easy to let herself drift off. She could see Grandmother again, and Aunt Rhaelle and Aunt Jenny with flowers in her hair, she could be _whole_ , with no scars, no hurts, just calm.

But she can’t leave her little boy behind, nor her new daughter. She had been left behind by her own parents, had she not? In spirit if not in body. Who is she to forsake the only children she has left? The only _family_ she has left? Her firstborn, her good-daughter, even her poor, poor grandchildren, they’re all dead, but she’s alive. Why the gods had spared her now when they’d seen fit to punish her all her life she doesn’t know, but mayhaps this is the reason. Mayhaps Viserys is right, they can start over somewhere. And if she lets go, then what? She would never see Viserys grow into manhood, nor her babe into a beautiful little girl. Aerys would win yet again, would have dragged her down with him.

She shuts her eyes, trying to summon strength she doesn’t have. “No,” she says, holding tight to Viserys’s hand. “No, darling, I won’t leave you.”

He climbs up onto the bed beside her and curls into her side like he used to do before Aerys forbade it. She falls asleep with him in her arms and when she wakes the next morning, her head is clear.

* * *

It is Viserys who first asks her what will happen to them, where his brother is, where Elia and the babes are, if the Usurper will be slain, how long they’ll be staying on Dragonstone. She wants to tell him a lie about his family, tell him they’re safe, that Rhaegar is escorting his wife and children to Dorne, that Robert Baratheon has in fact been slain, but Viserys deserves the truth. She keeps the details to herself— _that_ , at least, she will not subject her son to—but she tells him the rest.

What she can’t tell him is what she doesn’t know: how long _will_ they be staying here? What will she _do_? Ser Willem has not said anything, but she has felt a sense of urgency in him over the last few weeks and knows he, too, is wondering what the next steps are. She certainly does not expect the Usurper will be content to let them sit on Dragonstone much longer, and when he isn’t…

She envisions what happened to her good-daughter and grandchildren happening to herself, Viserys, and Dany, and shudders. As long as there is life left in her, she will not let that happen.

Late that night, she goes to Ser Willem’s door, her jaw and determination set. “We are leaving this rock, ser,” she says. “I would have us seek refuge in Sunspear, if I weren’t afraid the Usurper would rain fire upon them. Essos is our only recourse, but I confess I do not know the politics. Where would provide us sanctuary?”

Ser Willem does not look surprised at her declaration; on the contrary, he looks impressed. “I had come to the same conclusion, Your Grace,” he says. “I believe Braavos is the safest place. But we must take only the essentials—our scouts have spotted ships on the horizon, and I fear Robert has made his move. We do not have long.”

Rhaella gives a grim nod. “We leave tonight.”

* * *

Viserys doesn’t understand why they are the ones who have to escape when they’re the rightful rulers. “You crowned _me_ , Mother,” he whines. “Aren’t _I_ king?”

“And you may yet be king one day,” she says. She can’t see how, without an army that they don’t have, nor a realm that would be eager to put Aerys’s son on the throne, but if Viserys were to hear that, she fears he’d become even more intractable. “But for now, we must away. The Baratheon fleet is approaching, and I cannot risk us being captured. I don’t know what they would do.”

“But _we_ didn’t do anything!”  


“I know, dearest, I know.” She cups his face, begging him to listen. “But what your father and brother did…they were our kin, and they are not alive to punish, whereas we are. One day, we may return here, but we _cannot_ stay. Do you trust me?”

“Yes, Mama.”

“Then trust me now,” she implores. “Gather your toys and books, and I will get the rest. Hurry, darling.”

She has no time to think as she throws together scarce few dresses and the jewels most precious to her. At best, she will have them as mementos, at worst…well, at worst, they would fetch a high price. If she reflects on how they’ve come to this—from rulers of Westeros to fugitives in less than a year—she fears she will break, and so she focuses on what she _can_ control. She selects only the most trustworthy of servants, knowing all too well what could happen if someone got it in their head to betray them. She would prefer they need no servants at all, but Ser Willem had insisted, and she must concede that he has a better frame of reference than she.

Rhaella watches from the stern of the ship as the Baratheon fleet docks at Dragonstone, but she refuses to weep, even when there is none to see her but the gods. She has endured unthinkable trials, and she will endure this, too.

* * *

“Paint it red.”

It’s the first thing she says when they come to the manse, on the Sealord’s dime. A manse with a door colored gold. Baratheon gold. Lannister gold. The mere sight of it makes her sick. She is not queen of anything here in this rain-soaked, frigid city, but nevertheless by evenfall the wooden door is bright scarlet, still tacky to the touch.

She grows used to Braavos, in time. As much as she can, that is. She never grows accustomed to the chill, and she wonders if this is how her dearest Elia had felt. A cold that sinks into her skin, into her very bones, a cold that no manner of blankets can quell.

But as much as the weather and the speech and the customs are unfamiliar, Ser Willem is blessedly the same, her boy is as sweet as he’s always been, though horribly plagued by night terrors. And her littlest…she had thought Dany wouldn’t survive the voyage to Braavos, she had been so small, and yet here she thrives in the house with the red door, which is more than she can say for the bedraggled lemon tree in the yard that must be replanted every year. She had asked once why they didn’t just rid themselves of it, plant something more suited to the climate, but she had learned that it was a symbol of _status_ , of wealth, like courtly silks or jeweled crowns.

Viserys doesn’t ask her as often now about when they can return, finally accepting her answer: _I don’t know._ And she doesn’t, truly she doesn’t. The Usurper’s queen had birthed an heir, or so the news had come, a boy with golden hair and emerald eyes. She hears news of Dorne as well, of Prince Oberyn’s violent anguish. _That_ had brought a smile to her face. The boy had always been brash and impetuous, from the very minute he was born.

Jon Arryn had gone south not long after that, accompanied by the bones of all that House Martell had lost at the hands of the Lannisters—tradition would have had Rhaenys and Aegon burned, as her son and Aerys had been. She’s glad they weren’t. Lord Arryn is astute, though she would expect nothing less.

She begins to wonder whether they ought to go back at _all_ , as she slowly accepts what their position is. Should the Sealord tire of them, they would have to make their own way, and Rhaella doesn’t know what they would do then. She knows embroidery and has always been good with tongues, but that would help little in the way of coin, let alone in acquiring an army. And with the realm settling into their new regime, she knows she would not be able to count on those who had supported her house. What few there were would not rise up again for them, not without assurances. Assurances Rhaella does not have.

At least—assurances Rhaella _didn’t_ have.

It is a rare cloudless day when the knock comes at the door, and Rhaella answers it herself. She would have wagered her own crown that it would not be Oberyn Martell standing on the steps, and she would have lost. He looks so much like Loreza, so much like _Elia_ , that Rhaella nearly bursts into tears.

“What are you doing here?” she asks him as she brings him inside.

“I had business in Lorath,” he says, in the way that tells her he had no such thing. “And now, I am dropping in on an old friend.”

Oberyn is just as wicked as she remembers, but now there’s cruel vengeance in his eyes, too. She’d never been able to wear her emotions so readily on her sleeve, not even as a girl; but then, she doesn’t know how to poison a man the way he does.

“You didn’t go to Lorath,” she says. “You came to Braavos specifically.”

“Yes, I did.” A squeal of delight reaches their ears from the other end of the manse, and he tilts his head in its direction. “You named her Daenerys, I hear?”

“It seemed fitting,” she answers. “I’ve always admired her. Her beauty, her grace, her strength…and the kindness of her husband. Prince Maron was rather dashing, so the stories say. Princess Daenerys loved him very much.”

“Indeed,” says Oberyn, his black eyes shrewd. “As it happens, marriage is why I am here.”

For a moment, Rhaella thinks he means _her_ , but of course that’s absurd; there would be no benefit to her wedding a Martell. However…

Rhaella leans back in her seat and for the first time in longer than she can remember, she feels _joy_.  “How is your niece these days, my prince?”

A viper smiles back at her.


End file.
